page_title: Bloeme Evers-Emden
section_title: Post-war research
hierarchical_section_title: Bloeme Evers-Emden / Post-war research
caption_attribution_description: הרב אייפערס
context_page_description: Bloeme Evers-Emden was a Dutch Jewish teacher and child psychologist who extensively researched the phenomenon of "hidden children" during World War II and wrote four books on the subject in the 1990s. Her interest in the topic grew out of her own experiences during World War II, when she was forced to go into hiding from the Nazis and was subsequently arrested and deported to Auschwitz on the last transport leaving the Westerbork transit camp on 3 September 1944. Together with her on the train were Anne Frank and her family, whom she had known in Amsterdam. She was liberated on 8 May 1945.
  In the 1980s, Evers-Emden earned a doctorate in developmental psychology and began interviewing and writing about the phenomenon of "hidden children" from the points of view of the children, their biological parents, their non-Jewish foster parents, and their non-Jewish foster siblings. She was also interviewed for several television documentaries on her remembrances of Anne Frank and her family before they went into hiding and after they were sent to Auschwitz.
context_section_description: After the war, she married Hans Evers and raised a "relatively large family" in Amsterdam. However, she testified, she was unable to talk about her war experiences with her family. She began studying psychology part-time and became a lecturer in psychology at the University of Amsterdam in 1973. She earned her doctorate in the late 1980s.
  In the 1980s, she began holding group therapy sessions for former hidden children, addressing "our grief, our anger, our aggression and our mourning". At the Hidden Child Conference held in Amsterdam in 1992, she interviewed 73 former hidden children, and with questionnaires completed by another 321 attendants, she began her research into the emotional and psychological trauma of hidden children, widening her scope to include the points of view of the children, their biological parents, their non-Jewish foster parents, and their non-Jewish foster siblings.
  In the 1990s, Evers-Emden published four books in Dutch based on her research. Geleende Kinderen (Borrowed Children) (1994) focused on the foster parents who hid the children. Ondergedoken Geweest, Een Afgesloten Verleden? (Hidden During the War: A Closed-Off Past?) (1995) examined the written responses of 300 hidden children to a questionnaire. Geschonden Bestaan (Shattered Existence) (1996) interviewed the parents who sent their children into hiding. Je ouders delen (Sharing Your Parents) (1999) focused on the foster siblings of the hidden children.
  In 1991, she was decorated by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands as an officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau.
  Her son, Raphael Evers, is the Rabbi of Düsseldorf.
  Evers-Emden died in July 2016, eight days before her 90th birthday.
caption: Evers-Emden's son Raphael Evers, Rabbi of Amsterdam.
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